Designing with Care: More-than-Human Perspectives in Digital Health and Cultural Heritage

Fanke is a social innovation expert and enterprise fellow in the College of Creatives Arts, Design and Humanities, Adelaide University. Her major areas of research expertise are design, digital health, digital cultural heritage, human-computer interaction, and social innovation. She has extensive peer review, editorial, and conference leadership experience across art and design, human-computer interaction, digital health, and interdisciplinary research, supporting the assessment of research quality, originality, and significance.
 
An award-winning educator, accomplished researcher, and experienced postgraduate supervisor, Fanke is passionate about design-led innovation. Her work centres on transdisciplinary, design-led research and teaching that foregrounds the critical role of design in helping society navigate rapid technological change and global uncertainty. She collaborates with academic, industry, and government partners in applied research contexts, bringing design into dialogue with emerging technologies, social innovation, health and wellbeing, cultural studies, anthropology, and sociology. In recognition of her contributions to higher education, she was awarded Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in 2020.
 
Fanke leads research on social design, and is the lead chief investigator on the ARC Discovery project investigating “Fostering Social Inclusion and Building Social Capital: The Role of Australian Neighbourhood and Community Houses and Centres” (2025-2028). She is also a chief investigator on the NHMRC Partnership project “Spark: A Community Co-design Model to Fight Loneliness”. She has led 22 projects with 35 industrial partners. Her research leadership is demonstrated through sustained achievements in securing competitive national and international grants worth over AUD 3 million, including those from the Australian Research Council (ARC), National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Creative Australia, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), as well as multiple industry-funded projects—reflecting the collaborative and practice-based nature of the creative disciplines. In recognition of her significant and sustained commitment to advancing research, her leadership in initiating innovative research directions, and her successful delivery of major projects of national and international significance and impact, alongside her strong record in supervising and mentoring staff and HDR candidates, she was awarded the Excellence in Research Award (2025) by the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools.